DC robot overlords? No, they’re just making deliveries

Testingfor terrestrial drones in no-fly-zone city is now fully underway.

Last summer, Washington DC's city council has unanimously approved the terms of a test deployment of sidewalk-crawling delivery “drones” within the District, scheduled to begin in September. The regulations, part of an amendment to the district's budget bill, paves the way for tests with robotic delivery vehicles from Starship Technologies, a London-headquartered robotics company with engineering operations based in Estonia.

Amazon and other companies have been working on technology for flying delivery drones, but Starship's more pedestrian approach is at least theoretically a better fit for Washington, which is a no-fly zone for drones. The regulations aren't restricted to Starship—any company could participate in the trial period, but there are some ground rules, so to speak: the robots can't weigh more than 50 pounds without their payload, they must travel no faster than 10mph, and they're restricted to sidewalks. Any robots that fail must be retrieved within 24 hours. The pilot began September 15, and runs until the end of the year—and the roll-out, so to speak, is fully underway, much to the confusion and concern of some DC residents.

While the test period is open, Starship is clearly positioned as the first mover. Founded by Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis (the cofounders of Skype), the company's robots are the only contenders that currently fit the bill and are already being tested in Europe.Intended for deliveries within a three-mile radius, the six-wheeled electric robots can be monitored in transit by customers with a smartphone, and they weigh less than 40 pounds even when loaded. Because of the limited range of the bots, Starship is testing them in concert with delivery vans that deploy and retrieve them.

At that weight, the biggest concern may be how Starship prevents people from snatching its robotic minions off the DC streets.